


Fundamental interconnectedness

by hypothetical_otters



Category: Dirk Gently (TV 2010), Green Wing
Genre: Champagne, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-17 01:00:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29584821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypothetical_otters/pseuds/hypothetical_otters
Summary: "I killed my friend, by firing a champagne cork into his face. Accidentally." Tom Basden - ChampagneFeatures zero death, just a conversation about a coma dream.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 2





	Fundamental interconnectedness

Mac puts a teaspoon into the open but undrunk bottle of champagne, and puts the unused glasses back in the cupboard. Hopefully the champagne will keep, otherwise it’s a waste of a decent bottle. As he does this, he can hear the end of Caroline’s conversation with a 999 operator. 

“Forget the ambulance, he’s waking up. No, he doesn’t need a hospital. I’m a doctor, that’s how I know. Because I can’t get an unconscious man in my car, but I could drive him.” she puts the phone down with a not quite performed level of annoyance. 

“Then there’s the parking at the hospital,” Mac adds as he rejoins Caroline and Guy. He squeezes her shoulder as he sits down next to her, and checks the torch he found in the kitchen works, just in case they need to check Guy for concussion. 

“You alright?” he asks Guy, who looks remarkably lucid for having been knocked unconscious for roughly three minutes. Guy, instead of answering, tries to sit up only to find Caroline’s hand on his chest keeping him from moving off the sofa. He looks down at her hand, then up at her, and opens his mouth. 

“No. you’re not moving, and you are definitely not saying whatever thought just popped into your brain. If you do, I will finish what Mac started with the champagne.” Guy and Mac stare at her blankly for approximately half a second. 

“Pour us drinks?” Guy asks innocently, well, innocently but for the smirk. At the same time, Mac suggests “get incredibly drunk?” and Caroline ignores them both. 

“Kill you. Guy, if you make any comments, I will kill you.” 

“Right,” he elongates the vowel, “ shutting up then.” he mimes zipping his lips, while MAc looks on in disbelief. After all this, Caroline helps Guy to get upright on the sofa, into a position more comfortable for a conversation. 

“Now, I don’t want us to bring work home, but should we check for concussion?”

“I’m fine,” Guy insists, “but, if it’ll make you feel better.” he opens his eyes as widely as possible while Mac checks his pupil dilation and reaction. 

“What do you remember?” Caroline asks, not quite conforming to the traditional concussion questionnaire. 

“I was in a warehouse.” Mac and Caroline stare at him, heads turning in unison. Guy suspects it’s a weird couple thing but doesn’t actually know, having never had a long enough relationship to experience this first hand.

“No, I know we were here celebrting, drinking champagne, I mean after the attempted murder. I wasn’t Guy Secretan, and I was in a warehouse that exploded.” Mac is still shining the torch in Guy’s eyes, despite having decided that Guy is fine except for the delusions. “Can you stop blinding me? I don’t want to have to explain to nurses that I went blind cause my idiot friend didn’t know when to stop checking for concussion.” Mac looks ever so slightly apologetic as he turns the torch off and puts it on a side table. 

“Ok, I’m worried and intrigued. Should I ask?” -- “probably not,” Mac interjects, “but you’re going to anyway” -- “but I’m going to anyway,” Caroline agrees, “why did it explode?” 

“Time machine with an auto destruct.” Guy says quick enough that it’s apparent he only brought it up so someone would ask. 

“Of course.” Caroline looks at Mac and a silent conversation takes place, mostly through eyebrow movements. The trouble with conversations held mostly through the movement of eyebrows and microexpressions is that they’re quite ambiguous. While Caroline thought the conversation went should I call an ambulance? I should call an ambulance and Mac’s return look said wait and see what happens, he might be fine this is not a universal understanding of the conversation. Mac’s interpretation of the conversation goes really? Get a load of this nonsense and his response was I know, but I thought I was a boy band when I was in a coma. The end result is the same, Guy witnesses the eyebrows moving, and the microexpressions and misses the nuance, same as the participants, and an ambulance is not called for. Guy is also not bundled into the nearest car and driven to hospital. 

“I was looking for a missing cat.” he says, like this takes away from the surreal aspect of a time machine with an auto destruct. 

“No you weren’t.” Caroline says emphatically, trying to make Guy see sense without telling him that he’s clearly lost his mind. 

“Not here, I know. In the dream. The cat had accidentally travelled back to the eighties with the neighbours ex-boyfriend. I had a side-kick,” a nonsequiteur that doesn't reassure anyone, “looked like your ex,” he adds conversationally. 

“Holly?” Mac asks, momentarily forgetting that going along with this delusion might not actually be the best idea.

“No, not Holly. Caroline’s ex. The therapist with the penknife.” 

“That you threw into his head.” 

“He had a penknife in his head. Nothing to do with me. Anyway, him. Jake? Made a terrible detective, don’t know what you saw in him.” 

“I ask myself the same question about you, constantly.” Guy looks at Mac somewhat nervously, expecting some sort of retribution for Caroline’s comment. Instead, Mac is silent, but smiling a bit. 

“Mac?” Guy starts looking around for the champagne, and wonders if he should be on the look out for more projectile weapons. 

“It’s just a bit funny. You invented a life to watch before you died.”

“Didn’t die. You just tried to kill me.” 

“I wasn’t trying to. All I’m saying, is your life is so boring that you invented someone else’s to flash before your eyes.” Mac is up out of his seat and into the kitchen before Guy can retaliate. He’s getting the champagne again, since Guy is obviously fine.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m hoping the crack premise makes up for the lack of actual jokes. I have never written a deliberate joke in my life and I don’t intend to start now. As a comedian, it’s sort of a problem. 
> 
> Quote in the summary comes from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vORSoHm0Ogo 
> 
> Not intended as a shipfic, but feel free to put your goggles on. I have no idea what the champagne is for: like in the song an engagement party, someone getting a better job, Mac not dying, an anniversary, someone else retiring? Answers on a postcard, please. 
> 
> There is a paragraph in here that is, to put it lightly, influenced by Good Omens. easy to spot tbh. 
> 
> Nothing here belongs to me, Dirk Gently is from Douglas Adams, and BBC 4. Green Wing belongs to Channel 4.


End file.
